Friday 10 October 2014

Prohibitionsists seeking medicalisation of plants v No Victim No Crime

Prohibitionists are campaigning to try to keep a residual prohibition law by working towards "medicalisation" - allowing a limited number of patients selected by doctors to obtain cannabis extracts or irradiated and standardised product to obtain cannabis on prescription at grossly inflated prices and profits for the pharmaceutical giants thus removing the possibility of anyone caught growing in ppossession to use medical need in mitigation or defence.

Anyone without a prescription could still be busted if caught growing or in possession - just like many other prescription medications.

Strangely enough there are no health warnings on Sativex or Bedrocan

Prohibitionists stooping low claiming cannabis is as addictive and dangerous as heroin, that it does not increase creativity, causes paranoia, schizophrenia, psychosis, impotence, baldness, loss of memory, loss of motivation, is a gateway to hard drugs and so on

We are argue with them 'til blue cheese in the face.

Point I make is that EVEN IF any of that is true for even one user - all the more reason for consumer protection but no reason to punish that person (those people) that suffer bad effects and certainly NO REASON to punish the rest of us.

In the name of Justice = no victim no crime

Wake up folks!


https://www.facebook.com/pages/NO-Victim-NO-CRIME/257914584389417

Saturday 27 September 2014

'Scratch and sniff' cannabis plan

Be warned, this is a con and somebody is going to make a small fortune from selling these cards to authorities when the cards actually smell nothing like cannabis. They already have dogs much better than humans at smelling.

It will also risk turning neighbour against neighbour.

But it also sends out the wrong message that cannabis is a dangerous drug.

Firstly, cannabis is a plant - a plant that grew wild until about a century ago - a plant used throughout history since the times of the ancient Chinese and Egyptians right through Culpeper's Herbal time until the present day - and used widely for medicinal benefit.

Today it is used to treat, ease and cure a wide range of ailments and pains, from MS, epilepsy and glaucoma to headaches and back aches and even said to cure and ease cancers and tumours.

The number of users - often young people - that suffer bad consequences is a minute proportion of users - far smaller in number than those that get bad effects from using prescribed drugs. And in fact cannabis is prescribed in the raw but irradiated and standardised form of Bedrocan in many countries, and in the UK and elsewhere as a powerful whole-plant extract in alcohol (a far more dangerous drug itself) called Sativex.

Those youngsters that get cannabis do not grow their own, they buy from the street dealers just like adults - dealers that are untaxed, unknown, uncontrolled and may have few or no scruples about age or quality and may even offer harder drugs.

It makes no sense to punish all growers or users because a few users suffer - no more sense than it would to punish all drinkers because of those that suffer or do harm.

To solve whatever cannabis problems we have it is essential, as they realised in Colorado, Washington and the Netherlands, Uruguay etc, to allow adults to buy cannabis and to allow people their Right to their private lives including the growing of cannabis for their own uses.

http://www.u.tv/News/PSNI-scratch-and-sniff-cannabis-plan/c54a24a5-de7f-40b9-8314-ec5f988047b5


PSNI 'scratch and sniff' cannabis plan: UTV, 27 September 2014

The PSNI is to distribute scratch and sniff cards to the public in order to raise awareness and improve detection of illegal cannabis factories.

The campaign comes after an increase in the number of cannabis factories discovered in the past year rose by 44%.

Since April, police have uncovered 49 factories. In the previous year they broke up 130 facilities compared to 90 in 2012/13 financial year.

The scratch and sniff cards contain an element which replicates the smell of the plant being grown, which is different to the smell of it being smoked.
It's hoped the campaign, launched by the PSNI and independent charity Crimestoppers, will educate the public on how to spot the signs of an illicit operation in their neighbourhoods and encourage them to report their suspicions.

A special presentation will also be made to landlords and others about the signs to look out for and a special DVD has been produced for further guidance.
Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris said: "More than two cannabis factories are being uncovered every week in Northern Ireland. They are illegal and they are dangerous.

"The money generated by them runs into millions of pounds. That's money going into the pockets of organised criminals - used to fund even more criminal activity.

"From 1 April 2014 until 31 August 2014, police have arrested over 1,110 people for drugs offences and removed an estimated £3.9m of drugs from our streets.

"Over the coming weeks, officers across Northern Ireland will be distributing scratch and sniff cards to the public so that they will be able to recognise the signs and smells of cannabis factories in their local communities.
I have been impressed with this project and hope it will prove to be a successful additional tool to the police in their efforts to thwart cannabis growing in Northern Ireland.
Justice Minister David Ford
"We know that people may not realise that the empty, run down house or flat on their street with people coming and going may actually be a cannabis factory. It's not just the stereotype of the remote rural dwelling or disused industrial unit."

Justice Minister David Ford described the campaign as a "novel approach to a growing problem in society".

The Alliance minister added: "The distinctive smell is a tell-tale sign which the public should report to the PSNI or to Crimestoppers.

"This initiative is a very innovative example of law enforcement agencies, the voluntary sector and the public coming together to help keep Northern Ireland society safe."

Val Smith, vice chair of Crimestoppers Board Northern Ireland, emphasised the important role which the charity plays in crime detection: "It is really important for people to understand what happens when they ring Crimestoppers.

"There is no caller ID, so the person taking the call can't see the phone number that the call is being made from.

"This means that the caller remains totally anonymous. Similarly, the Crimestoppers 0800 555 111 number does not appear on your telephone bill, a further measure that helps to ensure complete anonymity.

"The caller isn't asked for their name or any personal information; they are simply given an opportunity to share information that they may have about an incident or suspicious behaviour.

"Any information Crimestoppers receives is then submitted to a central point within the Police Service of Northern Ireland and forwarded to the relevant policing area. This information can result in searches being conducted which lead to drugs being seized or cannabis farms being closed down."

Monday 15 September 2014

Praise over Portsmouth ‘pot picnic’ as users smoke in public

People ought to be concerned about why people that grow or possess cannabis in their own homes for their own use, whether as a recreation to relax or to ease pains or treat illnesses, face arrest even though they have done no harm.

Maybe it is to give the pharmaceutical companies an advantage - after all it is a pharmaceutical business that sells cannabis as a medicinal product (Sativex) at huge profits in the UK?

It is about time that the failed law was corrected and maybe then picnics and information events like this would stop -

Or maybe the cannabis smokers could be allocated somewhere safe and clean to go, away from the public and any children, where they can enjoy their herb in peace.

Let's face it, imagine agroup gathered ina park to drink booze (or take any other drug or medication) - what chaos there could hav ebeen - how many arrests would there have been - but thankfully drinkers have somehwere safe to go - pubs, clubs etc.

Let's give the cannabis smokers the same in the name of health and safety for all.

In the meantime I congratulate these protesters for having the courage to demand what is right and fair for all

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/criticism-over-portsmouth-pot-picnic-as-users-smoke-in-public-1-6298561
Criticism over Portsmouth ‘pot picnic’ as users smoke in public
The News, Portsmouth, September 15, 2014

CANNABIS campaigners have held the first ‘pot picnic’ in Portsmouth for 12 years – but are now facing criticism after some users openly smoked the drug in public.
Dozens went to the event, which organisers said was about awareness of what they say are the illegal drug’s benefits.
Police attended but city council leader, Councillor Donna Jones, was unhappy about the way the event – the first since the final Smokey Bear’s Picnic on Southses Common in 2002 – was policed.
Cllr Jones, a magistrate said: ‘I will be taking this up with the chief inspector for Portsmouth and urgently reviewing the situation.
‘I criticise anybody who is smoking any kind of illegal substance, particularly if they are doing it in public.
‘It’s a deplorable situation when young children are subjected to the smoke and smell from a very strong drug.’
Organiser Simon Dignam said he was not responsible for people smoking.
‘This one is going successfully, I can’t see a reason why we wouldn’t have one next year,’ he said.
‘They are smoking but there’s nothing I can do about that, it’s a personal preference. I personally haven’t had one, because I want to have a level head.’
Simon, from Hampshire Cannabis Community, had attracted campaigners, recreational users, families and people who use the drug medicinally to the day.
Hazel Pannell was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2012. Doctors discovered it spread and she believes she has around five years to live.
She told The News she takes the drug in oil form in the hope it would cure her.
The 65-year-old from Worthing said: ‘Hopefully it will cure it or stop it spreading. The legality is a worry, a constant concern and the fact that it’s difficult to get hold of, too.’
It comes as Dr Janet Maxwell, director of public health in Portsmouth, last week told The News that the class B drug has real and harmful effects on the human body and mind, including a link to ‘serious, long-term health problems’.
As reported, reform advocates have since criticised Dr Maxwell for her ‘scaremongering’ comments and said they will complain to the city council about her.
At the picnic on Saturday, held at Castle Field, in Southsea, many users of the drug said it brought them benefits.
Stevie Sizer, 33, from Milton, said it had changed his life.
He said: ‘I won’t hide the fact that I do smoke it myself, I have done for 18 years.
‘I started smoking it purely because I had anger management problems and depression at a young age, 13 or 14.
‘It completely changed my life. I still smoke it to this day, as recreational use and for medicinal purposes.’
Hampshire police were unable to confirm to The News if any arrests were made at the picnic but said they would make a comment today.
Business owner selling seeds wants drug to be legal
A COMPANY in the city is thriving selling cannabis seeds – but its owner has said legalising the drug would bring in tax cash.
Martin Bear, who runs the online retailer with 11 people and was at the event on Saturday, said: ‘The war on drugs isn’t working.
‘At the moment it’s a free-for-all. They’re not making any tax or VAT. The government has abandoned it to organised crime.’
But Mr Bear, from Fawcett Road, in Southsea, added selling seeds is legal. He said: ‘Seeds are 100 per cent legal to buy, possess, give away – the problem starts when you water them.’

Friday 5 September 2014

CENSORED: 1947 Cannabis Study on Epilepsy

It seems to be the pattern for governments that clearly favour synthetics and pharmaceuticals over plants. From the times of the ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptians through Romans and Culpeper's Herbal until 1971 cannabis was used as a medicine. But in 1961 and then in 1971 in the UK, cannabis was suddenly deemed to have no medical uses and possession, cultivation etc was banned. Nowadays Bedrocan is grown and sold through pharmacies in Netherlands and prescribed in other countries, Sativex a whole-plant extract marketted almost worldwide (both produced by pharmaceutical companies, pharmers, not farmers), as a medicine is now available in many US States and in fact USA has been supplying it to a very few patients for decades whilst all the time burning crops, arresting growers and claiming it has no medical use in international treaties and many country's national legislation. That reveals the hypocrisy and corruption of the governments we have elected.

please see  http://weedfinder.com/dash/news/censored-1947-cannabis-study-on-epilepsy/

Wednesday 23 July 2014

cannabis prohibition - is it actually due to the huge profits

"first a WARNING - to those suffering - posts such as the one below from balogh - do not send money, chances are they are conmen and in any case highly illegal.

"and that is the second problem - why is cannabis illegal to grow and possess even in one's own home?

"Why did Mr Cutler have to risk is freedom by using oil illegally produced, when a pahramaceutical company is allowed to grow the plants to extract all the active constitituents and make an expensive alcohol-based spray called Sativex, mainly for pain and MS, but so expensive that many health authorities refuse to supply it?

"one can of spray costing over £100 - one could grow the plants and make oil safely and efficiently at home for just a few pounds.

"the claim that cannabis can halt or cure cancer has been around since the 1970's, ignored by governments and cancer research charities, whilst people take ineffective treatments that save just a few lives and make many people worse, at great cost and great profit to the pharmaceutical giants.

"why?

"is it actually due to the huge profits?

"People need to demand that the oil be produced and prescribed - and it's already being grown and made to make Sativex, which makes a mockery of the Misuse of Drugs Act schedules that say cannabis has no medicinal uses.

"Corruption leading to premature death - somebody has to answer for that!"

http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/490381/Cannabis-oil-cured-my-cancer
Cannabis oil cured my terminal cancer

CANCER patient Mike Cutler yesterday hailed cannabis as a miracle cure for the disease after his symptoms vanished when he began taking the drug.

Mike, 63, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009 and was given a transplant. But in late 2012 he learned cancer had attacked the replacement organ.

In desperation he began researching online and found a YouTube video advocating the use of cannabis oil for cancer.

He decided to try it – and claims that three days after taking the banned Class B drug his excruciating pain disappeared. Two weeks later he began coughing up blood, which he believes contained the dead cancer cells.

The grandfather-of-nine went for a biopsy at the Royal Free Hospital in London in May and doctors told him the cancer cells had gone.
Retired builder Mike, of Hastings, East Sussex, recalled: “Finding I could die was terrible, so I began searching for something that could help me.

“I couldn’t accept that I was going to die. And when I found I was cured I was completely shocked.

“I’m a normal family man, not a druggie. But I had a serious illness and this helped. I can’t believe cannabis oil isn’t being used regularly as a treatment. It is a miracle cure. The NHS should use it.”

Mike resorted to illegally buying the substance from a dealer and used it to make his own tablets, taking one a day.

He is now campaigning for law changes to allow medicinal use of cannabis.

He spoke at a debate on the subject with Professor David Nutt and Green MP Caroline Lucas in Brighton.

Mike’s claim came as research published last week by the University of East Anglia revealed the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, can help fight cancerous cells.

Saturday 5 July 2014

Decisions on issuing licenses for safe cultivation of cannabis is a breach of Human Rights law by the UK Home Office

Under Human Rights law it is not legal to differentiate in the way authority treats people due to their property

- so in acting, for example, on whether or not, under the present Misuse of Drugs Act, they issue a license for the safe cultivation of cannabis, the Home Office  cannot legally treat people differently simply because they have different property and that would presumably include company directors and employees of say GW Pharmaceuticals.

Yet the owners of GW are given license to cultivate large crops of cannabis and extract the active chemicals into alcohol, for sale as a medication (Sativex) and at high price and profits, yet a person that does not have any ownership in the company will not be issued a license. That seems to me another discrepency between how the Home Office acts and Human Rights law.

All beneficial use is therapeutic - the difference is in urgency of need - the Cannabis Health Service

think that the decision whether or not to prosecute or punish somebody in possession of or for production of cannabis / drugs should be based upon whether or not the person has done harm or put at risk others or their property or Rights or they have threatened public health - as in fact stipulated in Human Rights law - and not on whether or not the person is injured or ill.

Campaigning for better medical access for those in urgent need is a different matter, of health and not law, and what is needed is for the Government to RESCHEDULE cannabis bud (plant materials) and not only Sativex as they have done.

Then cannabis will be available on prescription in the form of BEDROCAN, sterilised and standardised, through doctors and pharmacies as in The Netherlands, Italy and other countries and as Sativex but beware - that does not mean that doctors will be willing to prescribe it or that it will be free - in Netherlands one has to pay and a little more expensive than coffeeshops.

That would also not mean that it would become legal to grow cannabis even only for own use.

To enable that the campaign must DEMAND that the law respect Human Rights, specifically to a Private Life, to freedom to choose and practice ones belief and to equity of property between cannabis and, for example, alcohol.

Such a demand cannot be a demand only for one type of person for example those that are ill or injured, it must be applied the same for everyone (that is the acknowledgement of Human Rights not access to prescribed cannabis)

Also as we know cannabis has tremendous value as PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE - and as Clark French and previously Granny Pat Tabram, Chris Baldwin, The Late Biz Ivol, and many others that suffer and have found their suffering eased through consumption of cannabis, have said ALL USE IS MEDICINAL.

I agree with them - at best the line between "medicinal benefit" and "getting high" is vague, to my mind it is false. There is only use - therapeutic use. All else is degree of urgency of need.

So I think this campaign will need to focus on:
1) better access - that is through doctors, pharmacies and clinics
2) stopping prosecutions for possession and cultivation for own use

Then look at supply to adults other than through doctors etc, e.g. CSC's, Coffeeshops, Cannabis Clubs - to make that legal too.

Also Colin Davies has set up an enterprise to raise funds to buy / produce cannabis oil for those that cannot grow their own, many not expecting to live long enough to grow and crop their own.

It is called the CANNABIS HEALTH SERVICE and you can read about his cause and make a donation here
http://www.cannabishealthservice.org/

Tuesday 27 May 2014

Judge Pugsley described it as a "foul crime" because it led to the risk of addiction to other drugs."

"Judge Pugsley described it as a "foul crime" because it led to the risk of addiction to other drugs."

So is he saying we should punish people that grow or use cannabis because other people that take cannabis later take addictive drugs?

If that is so, then should we not be punishing those that drink coffee (itself quite addictive and certainly a drug) because some coffee drinkers later take more addictive drugs?

Should we not then argue to punish people with toy guns because some of them go on to get real guns and commit terrible crimes - or stop the licensing of guns completely - or punish all drivers because some drive too fast and have terrible accidents?

Or could we not simplify the law and only prosecute and punish those with victims?

http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Derby-judge-s-jail-threat-arthritic-gardener/story-21144213-detail/story.html

Derby judge's jail threat to arthritic gardener who grew cannabis

Derby Telegraph
Monday 26 May 2014

A GARDENER who has smoked cannabis for many years to alleviate pain from arthritis rented a cottage so he could grow the drug. Julian Pinnington started renting the property about a year ago and set up cannabis-growing systems in two of the bedrooms.

The 43-year-old admitted producing cannabis but said that it was primarily for his own use.

However, he accepted that, if there had been a large yield, he would have sold the drug to offset the £350 monthly rent he paid for the cottage.

Derby Crown Court was told that a drugs expert estimated that the potential yield of the operation was 1.5kg to 4kg and could have sold for between £9,720 and £40,500.

Judge David Pugsley handed Pinnington, of Lyndale Drive, Codnor, a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for a year.

And the judge said: "I'm sorry, you don't spend £350 a month on rent, never mind the equipment, if you don't intend to produce a significant amount of cannabis – unless you are a complete buffoon.

"A suspended sentence in your case is not a light sentence as, if you smoke cannabis, you will be sent to prison. My advice is you give it up."

Judge Pugsley described it as a "foul crime" because it led to the risk of addiction to other drugs.

Sarah Allen, prosecuting, said that police found three growing tents and 30 cannabis plants in the property in Oakerthorpe, as well as evidence of a previous crop.

She said that Pinnington's fingerprints were found on the growing equipment.

Miss Allen said: "He was arrested and he admitted he had been a user of cannabis for many years and suffered from arthritis and used it to alleviate the pain from that."

He told police he used about £60 to £70 of cannabis a week.

The court heard that Pinnington, who was self-employed as a gardener, had no previous convictions and was a family and community man.

Nicola Hunter, in mitigation, said Pinnington had started renting the cottage after he received compensation as a result of a car accident.

She said: "He decided to use the money to set up a cannabis grow. "His view at the time was: 'If I grow my own, I can grow a huge supply for myself.'

"He says he has never previously sold any and the previous grow was a catastrophe and produced nothing."

Pinnington will be supervised by the probation service for a year. This supervision includes a drug rehabilitation requirement.

Saturday 24 May 2014

If they do no harm to others, why arrest cannabis users?

Supt Mick Stamper  just about  sums it up "He said: “Cannabis is a harm to the individual, but a cannabis user will rarely cause harm to other people.“A class A user will cause harm to other people. On a societal level this is a big issue.”"

So if the cannabis users rarely do harm to others, why are they arrested?

It is nothing short of tyranny for a Government to interfer with a person's private life or lifestyle without good reason, and those reasons are made clear in Human Rights law - the authorities must be acting to prevent risk to public health, public order or the Rights of others.

If there are no victims but the taxpayers that pay the cost of enforcing bad law, then these arrests must stop.

No Victim No Crime - find it on Facebook

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/police-chief-cannabis-is-too-easy-to-get-hold-of-in-northampton-1-6078758 

Northampton Chronicle 24 May 2014
A Northamptonshire police chief says targeting ‘hard drug’ use will always be the force’s top priority, despite a charity’s fears that cannabis is now as easy to get hold of as tobacco.

Service manager for the CAN Young People’s Team, Ali Smith, said the class B drug was now too easy to acquire in Northampton and it could have devastating side effects on teenagers.


She said: “Years ago this was so much less of a problem. We saw little bits of cannabis, but not on the regular scale we see now. The stats are that young people are now using more.” 


Mrs Smith said cannabis was the biggest substance the St Giles Street centre – which provides a range of drug, alcohol and homelessness services for young people – deals with.


She said it could be especially harmful because young people were taking it as their bodies were still developing: “There’s a lot going on with young people,when you throw into that a strong hallucinogenic, it has a massive impact.”

Supt Mick Stamper, head of the Northamptonshire Police’s operational command unit, admitted the ‘culture’ of cannabis was a problem in young people, in particularly a misconception that it will cause little harm.


But he said the force will always have to prioritise targeting class A drugs, such as cocaine and heroin over the class B substance.


He said: “Cannabis is a harm to the individual, but a cannabis user will rarely cause harm to other people.


“A class A user will cause harm to other people. On a societal level this is a big issue.”

https://www.facebook.com/pages/NO-Victim-NO-CRIME/257914584389417

Thursday 22 May 2014

I would like to see candidates and parties mentioning cannabis issues in their manifestos, fliers and broadcasts

What I would like to see is candidates and parties mentioning cannabis issues in their manifestos, fliers and broadcasts - I have seen nothing.

AS for the Greens, a couple of years ago I wrote to them - the letter was forwarded with an added comment for somebody to reply and the reply along with comment came back to me - "I thought we'd taken care of the dopers' votes" it said.

For almost 20 years I have been involved in pushing the Greens and I must say that they did change their policy after the LCA became a political party and won votes in 2001.

I offered to finance a local candidate flier if it included the words Legalise Cannabis or something similar - the fliers were printed but the Norwich Green Party told the lady she was not allowed to put them out, so I withdrew my offer, the fliers were binned and she had no flier at all.

My Eastern Region Green Party candidate Rupert Reid and his associate Adrian Ramsey say advertising their "pro-cannabis" policy would lose them votes.

All credit to Caroline Lucas for starting a petition, but in my region, Rupsert Reid (says the cannabis issue is a "no-brainer") will not get my vote.

The next years General Election I will consider voting for any candidate that seems able and willing to represent me and that includes the cannabis issue - an issue that concerns health and medicine, law and Rights, fuel and pollution, the environment, agriculture, industry, employment, trade, tax, education and even foreign policy.

The absence of any mention of cannabis in these elections (in the UK) demonstrates to need for a dedicated cannabis political party - one that will allow the users to represent themselves.

NO VICTIM NO CRIME: Pay £16 Billion but go to jail

The law ought to be about protecting people and society not controlling them for no good reason, not punishing them for their choices even if they threaten or do no harm - and certainly not to prevent people from growing and possessing (using) plants for theor own medicinal benefits.

In the UK it costs the taxpayer about £500 a year each, on average, to finance this failed war on cananbis users, some £16 Bliion a year to "fight drugs" and the policy has failed.

If there is NO VICTIM then there ought be NO CRIME

Monday 19 May 2014

PIGS - The Enemies of Legalisation?

P is for paranoia and fear of persecution. This prevents cannabis users and non-users with a huge barrier to overcome before they can publicly speak out against prohibition. Users fear raids from the police and arrest, loss of employment and even imprisonment. Many professional people such as Doctors, Teachers, Lawyers, Probation Officers, Social Workers etc, although privately supporting legalisation or some lesser form of change in law, are afraid of persecution from people in power and the press. MP's of all parties can be silenced and pressurised to change their statements, by the Party Whips. Many Doctors quietly advise patients that cannabis is of possible benefit to them but will not make a public statement on the issue. If you are one of those professionals please speak out and help call an end to the suffering caused to hundreds of thousands of citizens of the UK, every year, under the inefficient and expensive attempts at suppressing freedom of choice, in general, cannabis in particular. If you are a user, fear not, for to express an opinion on the law is not an offense and does not indicate that you are a user. Many non-users advocate legalisation too.

I is for indifference and for ignorance. Many non-users and people who are stigmatised or victimised by society through illness, poverty, lifestyle, belief or riches and power, remain unconcerned or unaware of the disastrous social and environmental effects of prohibition. These people need to be awoken. Many of them are on drugs - heroin addicts, alcoholics, Valium addicts, alcoholics and at all rungs of the social ladder; they just don't care. But others do care, they just either don't know or don't know what they can do. It is up to activists to educate and guide these people to the postbox and the ballot boxes. Then, when they do care, we need to reassure them to avoid them slipping into the description of P.

G is for greed. These are the highly profit-motivated suppliers of illegal cannabis, often of dubious quality, and those directors (and their minions) of the multinational corporations that profit by billions from their environmentally damaging synthetic and dangerous alternatives. These include petroleum companies who risk losses if hemp seed oil becomes widely available; pharmaceutical companies who would lose out if people take less of their synthetic drugs and more home grown cannabis and including those that now make massive; profits from cannabis products such as “Sativex”; producers of plastics and synthetic materials - products that could be replaced locally from locally grown cannabis; nuclear fuel and fossil fuel companies whose products could also be replaced by locally grown cannabis, far more efficiently and cheaply than for all modern fuels; timber companies who fear that cannabis would replace wood as a material for furnishing as well as paper and packing materials; breweries and tobacco companies who fear that the use of home grown cannabis would decrease the sales of their highly dangerous legal drugs; national and international criminal and terrorist organisations who profit from illegal cannabis, possibly even the secret services of certain countries (not yours, of course); police, solicitors, barristers, judges and prison staff, with all the associated industry at colossal public expense, who may be out of a job is 250,000 less people are searched and 100,000 less prosecuted, annually.

S is for squabblers and for separation.. Those people who continually insist upon arguing over matters of minor or academic differences which distract from the general cause of delay action towards the consensus aim of legalisation. Such arguments are divisive and unproductive, often originating from personal grievances. Some times such arguments are introduced by insincere campaigners, even infiltrators from corners supporting prohibition, whose aim is to suppress by division and mistrust. Other times the arguments may be prolonged by sincere people. When the squabble, due to personal grievances, interferes with actions of the general movement for legalisation, or any particular event or group, then the squabblers become enemies of the movement.

Don't be any part of PIGS. Wake up, learn, act, cooperate, become involved in this movement which is all about freedom of choice, lifestyle and religion. It is about the very rights granted by the United Nations Charters. Prohibition of cannabis is a prolonged attempt at mis-education and tyrannical control, and must be resisted by the masses.

Sunday 18 May 2014

A Strange Justice That Convicts For Victimless Private Activities

It is disturbing to see Court cases where there are no victims and the only losers are the defendant and the taxpayers and one should be forgiven for thinking such cases to be politically or religiously motivated.

Sadly this is happening daily throughout the country in particular the likes of those prosecuted for possession or cultivation of cannabis for their own use in private.

It is even more shocking when these people are sent to prison for growing plants for medicinal use whilst GW Pharmaceuticals are licensed to grow tens if not hundreds of thousands of the same plants that they use to produce their highly profitable and expensive Sativex.

One incredible distinction made by Government is that Sativex is now scheduled in the UK as a drug with medicinal value whereas the plants themselves are still scheduled as a drug with no medical use.

Incredible to think that a pharmaceutical company is capable of creating a product with medicinal value from a plant with no medical value when the only difference is the alcohol used in the extraction process and the peppermint used in the flavouring.

It's little short of a scientific miracle, magic or alchemy, like turning lead into gold.

Can you imagine a time when lead is in fact turned into gold but the process was limited to the rich and powerful and anyone else risks prison for even trying it - even possession of lead is illegal?   I would call that tyranny.

That is what is happening in the UK and Neil Morgan’s recent imprisonment is one example.

Neil had been growing cannabis for his own use for many years and been sent to prisons and fined several times before his most recent case.

In all the cases there was nobody else involved, there were no victims, it was done in private, but despite Neil's attempts to stand up for his Right to a Private Life, Neil was repeatedly punished by the courts.

So it does not take much to see that if Neil was doing no harm to anyone or causing no risk to public health the only reason why he was prosecuted at all - was due to laws made by politicians, law that seem to favour the profits of big businesses.

How much longer will the public vote in these tyrannical prohibitionists that put law above Justice and profits above people?

How much longer will we stand for it?

Maybe people would wake up if it was tea and not cannabis - if the only tea they could get was many times the price from the chemist - of course cannabis and tea are very different plants - for a start tea has less medicinal value and uses and cannabis is less toxic.

FREE NEIL MORGAN: https://www.facebook.com/freeneilmorgan?fref=ts


UK: Cannabis user said prosecution was "breach of human rights" (Neil Morgan)

South Wales Evening Post
Sunday 18 May 2014

A MAN convicted of growing cannabis told a court if he was jailed there would be no-one to look after his dogs.

But a judge said, while he was sympathetic towards the animals, he would not be emotionally blackmailed and sentenced 58-year- old Neil Morgan to a year behind bars.

Swansea Crown Court heard Morgan had changed his lifestyle and switched from the growing of cannabis to producing mead and breeding dogs. He was convicted by a jury after standing trial at the court after denying cultivating drugs.

He had previously told the court he believed the prosecution was a breach of his human rights.

Morgan, from Hillrise Park in Clydach, has a long list of previous convictions for growing or possessing the drug.

His barrister Carina Hughes told Judge Paul Thomas that since his arrest for this latest offence, Morgan said he had broken his 40-year addiction to cannabis and instead turned his interests to making mead and breeding Jack Russell dogs.

Miss Hughes said Morgan had known he faced prison and had, in the time since his conviction, tried to re-home the 17 dogs, but not all had been.

Miss Hughes said: "He has had a significant change in attitude. In my submission, if he is given a custodial sentence then there's a potential here for him to take steps backwards. "

If he comes out of prison destitute, with no home, no dogs and having lost his mead interest he's likely to turn back to use cannabis."

But Judge Thomas then said that any attempt by Morgan to use the dogs to "emotionally blackmail" the court would not work because Morgan had known for more than a year he was likely to go to prison.

The judge told him although Miss Hughes had said everything she could on his behalf, because she did not represent him at trial she had not seen his "unrepentant" attitude throughout.

"Had you decided not to contest this matter, it may be that there would be some scope, although unlikely, for a different outcome.

"The time has come that you must learn that cultivating cannabis is an offence, whatever your personal views.

"I had, and still have, huge sympathy for your dogs but you have had over a year to do something about that," he added.

http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Cannabis-user-said-prosecution-breach-human/story-21106957-detail/story.html#Tpk0jaelIEiW1tjx.99

Thursday 15 May 2014

Question to Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP

Mr Baker, I heard you on BBC Radio Sussex this morning talking about medicinal use of cannabis by a man called Kieron Reeves as it seems to have stopped his epileptic seizures, and  a man Clark French that uses cannabis to ease the symptoms of his MS.

You said that government advisors have said that cannabis has limited medicinal uses - so why is it still scheduled as a drug with no medicinal uses and what uses do you acknowldge?

There are clearly some as GW Pharmaceuticals simply extract ALL the active ingredients from cannabis plants using alcohol to produce their peppermint-flavoured expensive spray called Sativex.

Obviously to produce Sativex a medicine by extracting compounds from a plant said to have such limited medicinal value is either magic, a miracle or some sort of fraud

 - and the punishment of people that grow the plant at home whilst allowing a pharmaceutical company to grow tens of thousands of plants to produce medicine for sale, is unjust and suggests corruption.

Please answer a question put to you on the show - Keiron Reeves says he needs cannabis to cope with his illness and that prescribed medication did not work - should he wait for the law to be changed considering that successive governments have stated they will not change it?

That is a direct question, please answer it - should people in desparate need of cannabis for medical reasons break the law or suffer in silence?

How ought the law deal with such people?

https://www.facebook.com/NormanBakerMP

available for a few days after May 16th  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ylhhz

Wednesday 14 May 2014

From Dot to Cleopatra - FACT, THEORY AND FICTION

Bearing in mind the huge range of years which the title ‘From Dot to Cleopatra’ suggests - billions of years - it may be surprising that the first chapter consists of only a few pages yet covers all the time up to about 3000 BC, yet the remainder of the book covers only the Ancient Egyptians over about 3000 years. Now that you have read Chapter One you may be wondering “Well, what is true?”, which is really the reason why I have included it. My intention was not, however, to confuse you or make you feel any pointlessness in studying history; on the contrary it is designed to give you a taste of forming your own conclusions, establishing your own beliefs and starting you off on the fascinating journey of unravelling the fact from the fiction. There are certainly a lot of gaps in our knowledge of our past and the past of our planet and the universe, a lot of ‘dark’ times about which we have little or no knowledge and have to rely largely on guess work and theory. In addition there are very many theories and beliefs and different interpretations of the solid discoveries that have been made.

History and Egyptology are both subjects which, like science, rely on observation, but in these cases the observations are of ‘items’ left either purposefully or accidentally, from the past. What these things mean is a different matter. Like scientists we must look at what we have before us and form a theory; then we must look at whatever else we know for sure and check the theory out for consistency. If the facts don’t fit we have to change the theory. Remember it was not so long ago that mankind believed the Earth was flat and that we could fall off the end. That was a theory based on observation. But there came a time when someone sailed round the world and never did fall off and then we had to get rid of the idea and believe the Earth was round.

There are two types of past which I am talking about, the Prehistoric and the Historic. History is the study of the past based on records kept, of particular interest to us now; records of people, places, events, activities and changes in society, the people and the rulers. In a perfect world, history would be an unbroken record of what actually happened. Unfortunately the world of man is never perfect: there are plenty of gaps in our knowledge. For a start, before we could have records we had to have some sort of writing or drawing in symbols. Then we had to feel the need to record events for posterity. Then those records had to survive until today, or at least until someone else could find and rewrite them, in which case that person’s interpretation would come into play.

Prehistory, then, is the study of the time before records were kept. On a world scale this time finished on different dates in different places. The Ancient Egyptians started writing about 3000 BC, whereas in Britain and Europe it came much later. Prehistory becomes history when we reach the stage in the development of the civilisation where they considered dates important. Before that we have to rely on what we can see now and on what is recorded as having been seen in the past. Scientists such as astronomers, cosmologists, cosmogonists, archaeologists and geologists base their theories on what is seen to happen, what it looks like has happened and what they postulate will happen, making the best guess possible. These guesses may be reasonable inferences or vague ideas. Sometimes there are so many observations which confirm the ideas that the theories become accepted as facts.

Consider, for instance, dinosaurs. We know that they existed, because plenty of bones have been found. We can infer their appearances by imagining how the bones fitted together and how they would be covered by muscle and skin. We can guess at what they ate by looking at fossils found from the same periods and looking at their teeth and comparing them with teeth of other creatures. We can guess that they were not very clever from the size of their brains, supposing that their brains were in their heads! But do we know what colours they were? Do we know what they did each day? Do we know why, after surviving for millions of years before any recognisable form of man came along, they suddenly died out? When dinosaurs roamed the world the ancestors of the creatures which would one day walk and talk, write and sing and cook and use tools and so on, that is us, were little more than clever little rodents living off leftovers. We can only guess at the answers.

History, being based on written records, should produce a more reliable picture of the past, but, you will see, that is not always so. We have a lot of modern day techniques such as radiocarbon dating, which enables us to date organic materials by measuring the percentages of a particular radio isotope of carbon, carbon 14 and we have computers to tabulate and analyse finds. We have stone stele and papyrus scrolls to study, often fragmented and needing rebuilding like a jigsaw puzzle. We have literally thousands of finds to ponder on. We have the tombs with their wall paintings and huge pyramids and temples with hieroglyphic carvings. From all this we can get a fairly good picture of what was happening.

The discovery of a stone tablet which you will read about, now called the Rosetta stone, which was found in Egypt at a place called Rosetta and, after about 20 years hard work deciphering it, we have been able to start to read the thousands of inscriptions and papyri. So we are able to create a picture of what happened all those years ago. But there will always be questions unanswered. For instance, imagine a stone tablet found out in the desert; it may hold script including the name of the writer and information from which we can date it - we cannot use radiocarbon dating on stone. Do we know this was the name of the person who wrote it? Well we do know that certain Pharaohs wrote their names - or rather got workmen to carve them - on their predecessors’ monuments, thus making them appear to be their’s instead. Sometimes even a royal name was chiselled out and a new name put in, or left blank. Another occurrence could have been when someone came along later and carved a name where there had been none, the name he may have thought should have been there. Would we know whether the name was the right one, carved at the time of building, or even a thousand years later? There was a particular Egyptian historian who became interested in the ‘Ancient Monuments’ some 2000 years after they were built and he is known to have visited the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Upon seeing the absence of the king’s name on one of the other pyramids, he chiselled it out - Unas, or Wenis.

Imagine another situation where a tomb or a hole in the ground is discovered and in this is found a corpse together with some everyday objects such as a comb, a doll, or a piece of jewellery. On one of these items there is a name. Is this the name of the owner? Was this the name of the living person whose body is in the grave? Often there is no way of knowing. Certainly there have been finds in places where such items would not normally be expected to occur. Maybe the item was transported, lost or robbed, and buried or sold on. This type of discovery was made in Giza near Cairo, at the site of the Great Pyramid. The Great Pyramid did not seem to bear the name of the builder, which would seem rather strange if it had been built as a monument to the Pharaoh of the time. Many people have thought that the Great Pyramid was built as the result of an egotistical urge of the Pharaoh to proclaim his greatness. This argument has serious flaws; for a start they say that the Pharaoh’s successor also built a pyramid, but if it also was a result of ego then we may well ask why this Pharaoh built one slightly smaller and why the next Pharaoh built his one smaller. But how do we know who these Pharaohs were? Well, not far from the outside of the Great Pyramid, deep within an underground shaft, was found a very small statuette of the Pharaoh Cheops (now in Cairo Museum). In fact this is the only representation of Cheops so far ever found and it was upside down as if dropped. Based on this find it is generally accepted that Cheops was the builder of the Great Pyramid, although the reasoning is hardly reliable.

What about stories handed down generation after generation before being written down? How reliable are those? If you have ever played ‘Chinese whispers’ with about seven or so people, you will have seen how repeated words can change. Over hundreds or thousands of years the stories would certainly be subjected to colourful embellishments and exaggerations. Even if an event was recorded at the time, was that how it happened or simply how the writer or his superior wanted it to look? Did Adam walk on Earth? What about Osiris? Was there a great flood? If there was, did the people who survived know what caused it, or only guess? Who selected what to record and what to miss out?

In the Bible the name Egypt is mentioned hundreds of times, yet in Egyptian history the name Israel is hardly mentioned at all. In the Bible, Moses is mentioned and the king is simply referred to as Pharaoh, so we do not know for sure which one it was. Whoever it was, the Exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery must have been a momentous event, yet there is no record of it at all in Egypt’s records and no mention of Moses. Maybe the defeated Pharaoh, like most people, preferred to record his winnings to his losses!

So Egyptology is vague. In this book I am trying to show you the difference between what I know, what I am reasonably sure of and what I can only guess at and leave the decision of what to believe up to you. As you go on to read more you can always change your mind and opinions without shame. There is not always a clear cut right and wrong. For a moment think about the fantastic discoveries from the Tomb of Tutankhamun in The Valley of the Kings. There was huge wealth inside. We can reasonably believe that the items were put there due to religious beliefs and stayed there because it was not found earlier! Other Pharonic tombs, when rediscovered in modern times, mostly contained nothing save a damaged mummy. We can surmise that this was because they were robbed and we know that this was a big problem in the time of Ramesses X. Since many of the Pharaohs were a lot richer than Tutankhamun it is reasonable to say that their tombs would have contained a lot more than his. So where did all that stuff go? Who were the robbers? Poor men, workers maybe, corrupt officials, later Pharaohs, foreign invaders? Nobody knows.

If you decide to scratch a little deeper into the mysteries of Ancient Egypt you will find every section an ever deepening intrigue before you; you will realise the contradictions between authors both in opinion and so-called fact. You will see whole dynasties moved about through hundreds of years and anomalies such as tombs apparently built before the owner’s birth. Many are the remaining mysteries. Yet sacred Egyptian writings promise that one day all will be revealed.

Next I want to mention the names of the Pharaohs and how we know them. Firstly consider that we know the hieroglyphs were all consonants; there were no real vowels. So if we get a name like, Rmsss, it could be Ramesses, Romassis, Remosses and so on. So we are not entirely sure we are pronouncing the name as it was pronounced in those days, but that really is not very important since a name is merely a means of reference and providing we keep to the same name for the same person, we should not get too confused. Think of them as nicknames.

A lot of the information we rely on was written by historians of the past; in particular, we rely on them for lists of Pharaohs’ names. The first person who wrote history was a son of the famous Ramesses II, called Khaemwese, who lived about 1250 BC By this time the pyramids were ancient and the Valley of the Kings old. Khaemwese was actually a Magician and a High Priest of Ptah. He visited many tombs at Saqqara and studied books in the Royal Library. He was the one who chiselled the name of Unas on the pyramid at Saqqara and he also carved a message saying that it was he who carved the name, “since it was not found on the face of the pyramid, because the priest Khaemwese loved to restore the monuments of Upper and Lower Egypt”.

In about 450 BC a Greek writer called Herodotus visited Egypt and tried to sort out the fact from the fiction, basing his work on the results of discussions with people, in particular the priests. Herodotus had been born in Halicarnassus and travelled a lot and in his later life wrote a book called ‘The Histories’. He is now considered the ‘Father of History’ and we rely upon his reports, although he was sometimes inaccurate, relying so much on hearsay. Some of his information, such as the time when the Pharaoh Cheops was said to have closed the temples, has since proved inaccurate, but his information on certain other Pharaohs, such as Amasis, is all we have. In fact we know very little about Herodotus himself. The lives of the writers were not recorded in great detail, or at least none have been found. We know that Herodotus was the son of Lyxes called Carian and Dryo. He seems to have been very much influenced by the Inonian culture of Greece and, in fact, Ionic was the language in which he wrote. His large volumes contained information on the geography, history and ethnography of Egypt. His observations in Egypt, at the time after the invasion by Cambyses, are invaluable. Herodotus wrote of Egypt “Such animals as there are in Egypt, both wild and tame, are held to be sacred”.

During the reign of Ptolemy II, there lived a priest called Manetho (305 - 285 BC) and it is to him we owe the division of the Pharonic times into 31 dynasties. Manetho wrote in Greek and took his information from surviving documents, now lost. He gave the ancient Pharaohs Greek names. Some of the dynasties he listed were contemporaneous with each other, there being one ruler in Upper Egypt and another in Lower Egypt. These were competing dynasties.

As well as dividing the large time span into dynasties modern day historians have divided it into periods. These are the approximate dates of the different periods:-
Archaic Period 3100 - 2686 BC
Old Kingdom 2686 - 2181 BC
First Intermediate Period 2181 - 2133 BC
Middle Kingdom 2133 - 1633 BC
Second Intermediate Period 1633 - 1567 BC
New Kingdom 1567 - 1085 BC
Third Intermediate Period 1085 - 750 BC
Late Period 750 - 323 BC
Ptolemaic Period 323 - 30 BC

As with most dates from ancient Egypt these are subjective.

During Roman times tourists were able to move around and visit many of the monuments, including the Pyramids and the Valley of the Kings and they often left graffiti to commemorate their interest. What were in those days simply uncalled-for scribbles on the monuments have become, to us, historic inscriptions in themselves!

In 25 BC a Greek called Strabo wrote 17 books called ‘Geographia’and although mainly about geography, the last book provides some interesting information. Strabo mentions the two huge statues of Amenophis III, on the West Bank at Thebes, known as the ‘Colossi of Memnon’. They once flanked a large mortuary temple. In 27 BC there was an earthquake which cracked the monuments and led to a very strange and eerie sound in the mornings. By the time Strabo arrived there were tales of the singing colossi! However, it is now known that it was caused by the morning temperature rise which made the insides of the statues vibrate as the warm air passed through the cracks. Strabo listed the names of towns, pyramids, tombs, temples and also made notes on the Nilometer at Elephantine, near Aswan. A very useful 2000 years old list.

In the years of the Roman occupation of Egypt there lived another historian, Pleny the Elder (27 -79 AD) who wrote his ‘Historia Naturalis’, drawing from many older sources which have since disappeared. He described the Sphinx and obelisks (one of which was transported to Rome and stands there to this day) and mentions some of the techniques of preparation of mummies.

A few years later Plutarch (50 - 120 AD) wrote an account of the myth of Osiris and Isis. This is very fortunate for us, since no original Egyptian version has survived until today.

At the same time a Roman historian, Flavius Josephus, wrote his own work using extracts from Manetho and making comments on Moses, the Exodus and the Hyksos invasion.

In the following few centuries AD, Egypt became a Christian country for a while. The Christians held no respect whatsoever for the monuments, destroying many of the inscriptions on temples and even scraping the paint off the walls of tombs. The Christians considered the ancient religions of Egypt to be evil. Monks who adapted tombs as their living quarters often defaced or obliterated the wall paintings.

By the time the Arabs arrived in Egypt in the 7th century AD, the population had forgotten all about the early civilisations and lost the ability to read the hieroglyphs. The Arabs, like the Christians, considered the monuments evil, thinking that the huge pyramids and statues had been built by giants or magicians. They ignored them, except when they wanted to destroy one, or take it apart for the materials for their new buildings and mosques.

In more recent times, especially since Napoleon Bonaparte’s visit to Egypt in 1798 AD, interest in the old cultures has regrown. There were several major explorers and discoverers who have contributed a tremendous amount to our knowledge. Belzoni (1778 - 1823 AD) discovered the tomb of Aye, the magnificent tomb of Seti I and four others. He was also responsible for opening the Pyramid of Khephren and the discovery of the colossal statues of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel. His competitors, John Lewis Burckhart (1784 - 1817 AD), Bernardino Drovetti (1775 - 1852 AD) and Henry Salt (1780 - 1827 AD) were also very active in Egypt, often bringing items back to European museums. Drovetti, an Italian, made a major find, the Turin Canon of Kings.

Various people had tried to understand the hieroglyphs over the years. It was one William Warburton (1698 - 1779 AD), who became the Bishop of Gloucester, who recognised that hieroglyphics was in fact a written language and not just symbolic. But none of his contemporaries liked his ideas much, sticking to the notion that it was a symbolic script which would be impossible to understand.

In 1741 William Stukely, a doctor and famous antiquarian who was active at Avebury and Salisbury (in England), founded the Egyptian Society in London. Interest in ancient Egypt became more widespread. Stukely had examined the hieroglyphs on a statue in Turin and concluded that they were completely different from Chinese characters, which ‘experts’ were claiming had been derived from the hieroglyphs. He claimed that it was a symbolic script and that the hieroglyphics were beyond understanding.

Napoleon’s troops discovered the Rosetta Stone in Egypt. Wax impressions of the scripts (there were three on the stone - Hieroglyphs, Greek and Hieratic, which was an easier and quicker everyday form of hieroglyphs for everyday documents), were circulated amongst historians in Europe. The Stone itself was brought to Britain after the British troops had ousted Napoleon’s men from Egypt in 1801, following Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Aboukir.

Thomas Young (1773 - 1824) became fascinated by hieroglyphics and discovered the other written languages of Ancient Egypt. He realised that hieroglyphs were in fact alphabetical as well as ideogrammatic. He also suggested that the oval shaped Cartouche contained Royal Names, which we now know is true.

A major advance in our knowledge resulted from the decision made by Jean François Champollion to try to decipher the hieroglyphs. He spent his early years learning many languages and scripts, including Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Parsi, Persian, Zend, Pali, Chaldean and Coptic. He realised that the hieroglyphs were phonetic. When he eventually started to understand the inscriptions they were able to find out more about who owned what. In 1768 another great discoverer, James Bruce, had found a tomb in the Valley of the Kings but was not able to discover which Pharaoh it had belonged to. It turned out to have been Ramesses III’s.

Robert Hay (1799 - 1863) constructed 49 volumes of beautiful and detailed drawings of the monuments. This is now housed in the British Museum. It was about this time that another keen investigator of antiquity founded ‘Egyptology’ in England. This was John Gardner Wilkinson, 1797 - 1875. Wilkinson excavated many tombs at Thebes, adding much to knowledge of the Pharaohs.

Egypt was now becoming a popular tourist attraction for the wealthy. Florence Nightingale visited the monuments of Luxor in 1849. When she saw the Colossus of Memnon on the west bank, she exclaimed that it did not look so big after all, and that it was consistent with its surroundings stating that she thought it is us who were the dwarves. Another who visited to Egypt was Mark Twain in 1869.

A Frenchman called Auguste Mariette (1821 - 1881 AD) became interested in Egyptology after his son, Nestor l’Hôte, had been to Egypt with Champollion. He studied Egyptian writing and started building catalogues of items in the museum in Boulogne. He was then sent to Egypt himself, to collect rare manuscripts. He visited Saqqara and noticed the head of a sphinx sticking out of the sand and, having read Strabo’s descriptions of an avenue of Sphinxes, decided to start digging. This resulted in the discovery of the avenue, several tombs and the Serapeum where the Sacred Bulls had been buried. These were sensational finds at the time, especially the finding of the mummified bulls. Mariette decided he would love to open a museum in Egypt itself and, after some political changes in Egypt, Mariette was offered the post of Director of Ancient Monuments. This was the start of the first Egyptian museum. He then initiated excavations all over Egypt, at thirty-five different locations, including Dier el- Bahari, Karnak, Thebes, Abydos, Esna and Elephantine. His work led to an international exhibition including the precious jewellery of Queen Ahhotep, which was found at Thebes. Unfortunately though, it may be that Mariette’s enthusiasm for artefacts left a trail of damage and debris; seldom did explorers take care with how they worked, often using explosives instead of slower methods, to force entry, destroying untold valuable evidence of the past.

Until 1870 nobody (in the modern world) knew that Royal Mummies had been moved in the time of Ramesses X and XI, in the Valley of the Kings. The mummies were simply assumed to be missing or destroyed. It was Gaston Maspero (1846 - 1916 AD) who rescued them after they had been discovered in a cache in 1871 by a local villager called Ahmed Abd er-Rasul, accidentally, while he was searching for a lost goat!

Since then there have been many Egyptologists working all over the country. People like Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853 - 1942 AD) and Howard Carter (1874 - 1939 AD), a student of Petrie, have made monumental discoveries and filled museums in Egypt and around the world. There are 120,000 objects in the National Museum in Cairo. One could spend weeks roaming the corridors looking at statues, stele, small items, mummies, sarcophagi, papyri and so on. But without a very good guide book and, at least some ideas of who was who, one would probably be becoming more and more confused.

Petrie discovered tombs at Abydos, information on the Pharaoh Akhenaten and royal treasures from near the pyramid at Lahun. He also discovered over two thousand predynastic graves at a very ancient site, Nagada and the old city which had been given for the Greeks to live in, Naucratis. Howard Carter discovered, of course, the incredible tomb of Tutankhamun, amongst others, in the Valley of the Kings.

An American, George Reisner (1867 - 1942) was responsible for finding the tomb of the IVth dynasty Queen Hetepheres at Giza and the Valley temple of Menkaure and mastaba graves of nobles on the same site.

Mummies had become a valuable commodity in Europe and Asia, because people believed they had medicinal properties, which led to the exportation of mummies on a massive scale. One wonders which of the ancient Pharaohs and nobles were eaten in Europe, to cure a wide range of ailments such as coughs, nausea, ulcers, concussion and abscesses! The word mummy, derived from the Persian for bitumen, was often confused with bitumen itself. Even the King Francis I of France carried some ground up mummy, mixed with rhubarb, to cure his aches and pains. In 1809 Queen Victoria was given a gift of a mummy from the King of Persia. By the 18th century trade in mummies was so huge that it had to be made illegal.

As for the names of the Pharaohs, we rely on several sources, which together still do not give us a complete list. These are:-
(a) Manetho, who wrote Greek versions of the names.
(b) The Turin Canon of Kings, also known as the Turin Papyrus, now in the Museum of Turin. This is a Hieratic papyrus from the time of Ramesses II, which, although ruined gave us eighty to ninety Kings’ names.
(c) The Gallery of Lists in the Temple of Seti I at Abydos shows seventy-six ancestors of the Pharaoh Seti.
(d) The Table of Karnak from the time of Tuthmosis III, discovered in 1825, originally held sixty-one names but not all have survived to be read.
(e) The Table at Saqqara originally had fifty-seven names but only fifty are legible now.
(f) The Palermo Stone, badly broken, held the names of the first five dynasties and went back into pre-dynastic times, listing also the lengths of the Pharaoh’s reigns. It was originally compiled in the fifth dynasty. There are only five surviving pieces, now housed in museums in Cairo, the Palermo Museum and in the private collection of Petrie in the University College London.

Having several lists to refer to has both enabled Egyptologists to try to make a complete list and complicated matters further! This is because the Pharaohs each had more than one name and different lists refer to different names. In fact some finds previously attributed to two different Pharaohs are now known to be the work of one with two different names. Added to that is the fact that the ancient historians used other different names, even Greek versions and it is names like these that are often recognised today, like Cheops who was probably called Khufu. The works of the ancient historians such as Manetho have not survived, but were copied by later historians and not always copied well. It is particularly confusing for the first and second dynasties - dates are uncertain, names are changed, lengths of reigns are different in different lists. The first few Pharaohs offer a very small amount of evidence as to who they were exactly. We call the first Pharaoh Menes, but his hieroglyphs reveal the name Narmer. We do not know whether these names belonged to the same man or not. Before Narmer or Menes we believe there was a great pre-dynastic conqueror called Scorpion and after Narmer there was a Pharaoh now known as Hor-Aha. These names may apply to one, two, three or four different Kings, or for that matter even whole tribes. Apart from these names we actually know very little about the individual Pharaohs. We know some were great warriors and conquered other lands, whilst some seemed to have been peacemakers. Yet others were weak and under the thumbs of noblemen. One or two were very different, such as Akhenaten, who changed the religion and was later regarded as a heretic. There are a few stories which have come down to us from ancient times, which tell us that so-and-so was a cruel king or a kind king. It seems that the Pharaohs of dynasty four were quite cruel men, at the time of the building of the massive pyramids of Giza, although there were very few slaves. Mostly it seems that the local peoples worshipped the Pharaohs as gods, at least in the very early periods. As I have said we know very little and have to guess a lot.

Despite the vagueness and fuzziness of Egyptology and the large lists of strange names, it is this uncertainty which can lead to the fascination of unravelling it all. We are talking of a period of time longer than we are since Jesus and, apart from the Bible, there is little evidence of Him either. It can sometimes be far more enjoyable than knowing for sure, just like the fun of the jigsaw puzzle is in putting it all together.

Over the years the tombs and monuments of Ancient Egypt have continually suffered from tourists and explorers alike. From olden times finds have been exported from Egypt, both for museums and private collections. As well as removing and destroying mummies, deliberate damage was done to tombs and monuments by Christians and Moslems. In more modern times damage has been done accidentally by tourists. The fantastic tomb wall paintings of Nefertari, for instance, has suffered terribly form the results of thousands of tourists simply breathing! The salts in their breath have started to crystallise on top of the paint and chemicals in the rocks have crystallised under the paint, due to humidity. So the beautiful images have started falling apart, which, fortunately in this case, led to the closing of the tomb to the public and reparation work by experts. Other problems are solved far less easily, or maybe not at all, being caused by atmospheric pollution from 20th century factories. What little rain falls around Giza today is acid rain. Bits have been falling off the Sphinx, no longer hidden by sands, and have to be stuck back on. Another point of interest here is the face of the Sphinx. In all honesty it’s very ugly! It was actually badly damaged by invading Mameluks who decided to use it to test their canons! It is amazing it still stands at all, this ‘Father of Time’ as the Arabs call it.

Step Pyramid





If you visit Egypt and pay entrance fees to museums or tombs and pyramids, you can do so with the awareness that your money is going towards saving these precious monuments from the ancient past. Once they have gone they will never be built again!

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Sunday 23 February 2014

"Skunk" cannabis laced with heroin - pull the other one!

Oh come off it, try pulling the other leg!

First the article says super-strength "skunk" which is actually just one particular strain of the cannabis plant grown to increase THC levels, which is what most users wanted at the time, now over a decade ago.

Then you talk about cananbis sprayed with heroin which is much more expensive than cannabis - five to ten times the price I am told.

The greedy dealers would have to buy the costly heroin to spray on the plants they grow cheaply

Surely greedy dealers whose profit is entirely enabled by crazy prohibition laws that are not only an expensive failure when it comes to decreasing risk of harm, but so often punishes the very same victimless users and growers that it should protect - would not choose heroin to pullute the weed.

Whilst it may be true that some younger and even older novice cannabis users may not know the difference between good and bad cannabis, that which is pure and well grown, and that which is sprayed it is ridiculous to say that dealers would add heroin, which is nothing like cannabis (more akin to pills or booze) to get their customers addicted to the heroin and go back to buy more cannabis - and even more ridiculous when you claim that the cannabis itself is addictive -

It suggests that you do not know the meaning of the word addiction.when a heroin user that is addicted abstains or runs out, they often suffer uncontrollable withdrawal sysmptoms.when a cannabis user runs out, they may go out looking to more, but that is more the case of missing what one enjoys.and to think all this is caused by bad law - it does not happen in Netherlands where adults can buy from "Coffeeshops" and it is not happening in Colorado or Uruguay where cannabis is legal to buy.

Neither was it observed in all those countries such as India where cannabis has been used for many hundreds of years, even as part of religions.you want to put kids off smoking cannabis - blatant lies and distortion of the truth will not work just as it has never worked in the past!you want to reduce risk of harm, actual harm and consumption by youngers - legailse the cultivation at home for own use and open cannabis retail outlets for adults

To bring in a reformed drug addict to tell us how he used drugs, became addicted, overcame the addiction and is now OK - how stupid is that?

Liverpool Echo, February 23 2014
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/hooked-now-mersey-drug-dealers-6735907
Hooked: Now Mersey drug dealers are lacing skunk weed with heroin
Experts say many of youngsters 'don't know what they're smoking'

Drug dealers are hooking cannabis users to their ‘products’ by lacing them with highly addictive heroin, diazepam and methadone.

And now cannabis has overtaken alcohol as the drug that is gripping hold of teens and putting their mental health at risk, a Sunday ECHO investigation reveals.

Now the rising use of super strength cannabis, commonly known as skunk, is causing unknown damage, experts fear.

Specialist Dr Faizal Mohammed, clinical director for Mersey Care NHS Trust’s addiction service, says most young people turning to addiction services for help now come to them for cannabis problems rather than alcohol – so much so that they had to adapt what they do to help them.

And we have spoken to one recovered addict, who is still close to the drugs scene on Merseyside, who revealed how the hard drugs are sprayed onto cannabis leaves to create a ‘hit’ that users will become desperate to repeat.
He told us the kids taking the drugs ‘wouldn’t even know what they were smoking.’

Dr Mohammed told the Sunday ECHO: “We are increasingly seeing more patients report to us with cannabis. If you look at national trends, the numbers of people with crack cocaine and heroin there has been a decline, for cannabis there has been an increase.”

He said figures suggest in the 16 to 24 age group, cannabis is the most commonly used drug rather than alcohol, saying: “Those people coming to our services for treatment in that age group, 60% are coming for cannabis and related issues, 40% are coming for alcohol. Cannabis seems to be the main drug.

“About one in ten experience unpleasant effects of cannabis when using it. If someone takes a large amount of cannabis they could end up with racing heart, paranoia – where they think someone is following them, hallucinations, seeing, hearing things. I would say the increase in numbers coming to us has happened in the last two to three years.”

And he added that “skunk” – man manufactured using artificial intensive growth methods such as hydroponics – was causing the biggest worry among health professionals.

He said this breed of cannabis contains more Tetrahydro-cannabinol (THC) – the mind altering ingredient that gives cannabis its potency. But little is known of how damaging it is.

Dr Mohammed, who has been a consultant in Liverpool for five years, said: “10 years ago most of the cannabis that was used had a small amount of THC, skunk has more THC – the harmful element.

 “There is a clear association between cannabis and psychosis (abnormal condition of the mind), maybe a causal link. Whether it can cause psychosis is not entirely clear, but there is some link with depression and anxiety.

“Those who are vulnerable or have a family history of mental illness are vulnerable and that group should be careful using any amount of cannabis.”

The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) , which was launched on Merseyside in 2000, is also worried about the growth of skunk cannabis. They run a helpline open 5pm-midnight, seven days a week, every day of the year, where men can talk to someone on a whole range of issues from suicide, substance misuse, depression, illness, bereavement and more.

Simon Howes, Merseyside CALMzone Co-ordinator, said: " When we talk to people who use a lot of cannabis or skunk, the general themes are that it's not the quality it was, it causes more side affects and they feel it is having a negative effect either on their mood now or they have noticed it having an effect on their mental health in later life.
"Each person’s experiences can be different, but from our experience people may be experiencing increased anxiety, depression, difficulty managing anger, paranoia, panic attacks or difficulty with their short term memory. Often callers have used cannabis to try and manage their stress or cope with the difficulties they are facing in life, but it may actually end up adding to their problems and making it harder to cope."

David’s warning after 20 years of drugs hell

A victim of laced cannabis has revealed how he spend 20 years fighting a desperate drug habit.

David, who has now managed to get clean, warns that diazepam and methadone can be sprayed on to cannabis with users absolutely clueless as to what they are smoking.

The 32-year-old, who did not want to be identified, said: “These kids of the new generation are in an even worse place than we were. Now they spray it with methadone, diazepam. They put fibreglass, sand and saw dust in to weight it. The diazepam gives you a buzz but when you stop taking it, you get mad panic attacks and it’s a scary place to be.

“They’ll put heroin in it which shows how determined they are to keep people on the end of the line.

Far from being a ‘soft’ drug, David calls cannabis “psychosis in a cigarette”.

He said: “ If you had 1,000 criminals, 850 would say cannabis is where it all started, especially in this city. Cannabis is everywhere. To look at cannabis as harmless is delusional. Certain parts of this city are run by drugs. No matter where you go, you can get it. Ask kids on the corners, they’ll know where – one of them might even be selling it.”
David went from cannabis use at 13 to heroin, crack and cocaine in later years, but he counts cannabis as being the most dangerous.

 “The most violent drug is crack but the most dangerous is cannabis, because you’ve still got an alertness and as soon as you run out of it, you think in your head ‘I’ll do anything to get it’.”

David was convicted for a number of crimes all committed as a result of needing a cannabis high. One of the worst, he said, was breaking into a home shared by nurses.

Ashamed, he said: “I knew it was wrong at the time, these are people who heal the sick, but I wanted money for cannabis.”

His life was turned around by Mersey Care NHS Trust who has been helping him overcome addiction, he urges others to get help.

Thursday 6 February 2014

What does it mean that cannabis is illegal?

What does it mean that cannabis is illegal? 

First it must be stressed that it is not cannabis itself that is illegal or punished by law.

It means that people can be punished for possession or cultivation even if they have done no harm or posed no threat.

It means that people that could benefit from medicinal uses are denied the right to grow for themselves, forced to either go to drug dealers or take pharmaceutical pills that are often pricey, with possibly serious side-effects, and often highly dangerous in themselves.

It means that police and courts have to spend their time prosecuting people that are more often-than-not otherwise law-abiding citizens.

It means that whilst pharmaceutical companies make massive profits the taxpayers foot the bill.

It means that whilst those denied the benefits of the plant are punished, those minority of users that suffer often hide away for fear of punishment.

It means that people of all ages are exposed to hard drugs and crime through street dealers - and it is quite obvious after so many years of prohibition that cannot be stopped.

My question is: if one comes across a person suffering from mental health abnormalities after consuming cannabis, would one call a policeman or a doctor?

That is what prohibition is about and that is why I favour repeal of the repressive drugs laws to take control out of the hands of criminals and to respect Human Rights.